The gonzo piano genius of James Carroll Booker III

Few would argue that James Carroll Booker III belongs in the
upper echelon of New Orleans’ piano
geniuses—and there have been plenty.

A lot of paths led me to the brilliance of Booker, not the
least of which was my favorite band from New Orleans,
the Radiators, whose repertoire and rhythms drew considerably from Booker. Longtime friend and Radiators
bassist Reggie Scanlan, who is currently recovering from surgery for pancreatic
cancer, played with Booker for several years in the late ‘70s before the Radiators
coagulated to become New Orleans’
longest running rock band over the next three decades.

Scanlan recollected on his experiences playing with Booker in this
interview originally published in Beat Street Magazine, a fine but short-lived literary
magazine about New Orleans music
and street culture, in 2003.

By Karl Bremer

Radiators bassist Reggie Scanlan was still wet behind the
ears when he got tapped to play with James Booker.

“It was 1975,” Scanlan recalls, “and I got a call from
someone connected with Dr. John’s management, says ‘Hey, man, James Booker is
moving back to New Orleans and is having a gig on Mother’s Day. Do you wanna
play?’ It was at a black gay bar in the Quarter.”

Scanlan jumped at it. “From that first phone call, I knew it
was a total opportunity. The guy was such a legend, I knew I could learn
something if I could just hang on. … You knew you had heard his stuff but you
really didn’t know much about him. You had heard some of these outrageous
stories about him.”

The day before the gig, Booker met the band—Scanlan, Web
Burrell on drums and “Squirrel” on congas—for the first time for rehearsal. “So
Booker shows up and he’s—man, he’s kinda crazy,” Scanlan chuckles. “Obviously
flamboyantly gay, he’s got this huge wig on and the eye patch on—he’s a riot!

“He starts warming up and my jaw dropped to the ground. The
guy was unbelievable. Even then, I felt that bands really slowed this guy down.
No matter who was playing with him, he was, like, ‘Man, I got places to go.’ At
the end of the rehearsal, he says, ‘Let’s meet tomorrow before the gig, 5 o’clock, and we’ll go over some more stuff.’”

That left Scanlan with some degree of comfort. After all,
getting up to speed with the likes of Booker wasn’t an overnight
thing—especially for someone who describes himself at the time as “still just
learning the bare-bones basics of how to play.”

The next night, 5 o’clock
came and went and no sign of Booker. Eight
o’clock on the bandstand—the gig’s starting time—came and went and
still no sign of Booker.

"He shows up at 8:15,
8:30,” Scanlan says. “It kinda put me
on edge. When he came in, he had this little toiletry bag, he had the wig, the
eye patch, stick pin. They were oohin’ and aahin’ over Booker. The stage was
about the size of a desk. It sounded pretty cool, and as we started going
along, he starts flirting with this guy. They started flirting back and forth,
and all of a sudden he takes off his eye patch and takes another one out and
puts it on, looks at me and says ‘How does this look?’ And turns around and
without missing a beat keeps playing.”

Scanlan played with Booker on and off over the next five
years, with Booker almost always on piano, until his regular gig with the
Radiators got too busy. Like his time playing with ‘Fess, Scanlan says, “It was
a real education playing with Booker. There were some nights that were just
amazing—you couldn’t believe it. And other nights were sheer hell, because he
just kind of went over the top.”

One big difference between ‘Fess and Booker, at least from a
bassist’s perspective, was the role of the left hand.

“With ‘Fess, his left hand was a monster,” explains Scanlan.
“A bass was almost superfluous. Booker’s left hand was lighter, so you had a
little more room to move.”

Booker’s uncanny ability to string together medleys out of
thin air was particularly challenging, says Scanlan, but it was also what made playing
with Booker such a phenomenal learning experience.

“It was a job just keeping up and being ready for anything
… The way he could link things that were so disparate—“Iko” into Mozart into
Sinatra into Beatles—and it always made sense. … His fingers would just kind of
float all over the keyboards, but he had total command of his hands. He was
just so buoyant.”

Scanlan recalls one of his more bizarre gigs with Booker
inside Orleans Parish Prison, part of a concert series the prison put on.

“It was the Earl Turbinton Quartet and Booker. Earl’s band
is going to back up Booker, and I’m going to play, Vidacovich. We get down to
park the car and Booker starts reaching down in his pants and pulling out this
huge bag of pot. ‘I just wanna make sure it don’t fall outa my pants,’ Booker
says. ‘You’re not gonna take that in there?’ someone asks him. ‘Oh yeah, it’s
no problem for me,’ he says.”

“We get inside and Booker says, ‘I wanna take you around and
show you the cells I used to stay in. I said ‘No, thanks, man.’ … He had his
own little rooting section in there.”

Scanlan recorded on some sessions with Booker, but the best
one has never seen the light of day.

Allen Toussaint produced the spontaneous session, which
Scanlan says “happened literally in a day. Booker called, I said, ‘Yeah, I’d be
there.’ All these people are there. Earl King’s there, Ken Laxton, who was
(engineer) on (the Meters’) “Rejuvenation,” John Mayall’s in the studio, Fats’
drummer, Cyril (Neville), Allen’s running the show. We go through two tunes and
get ‘em down. It goes alright. And then Booker leaves.

“Everyone’s just hanging around, and Booker comes back, and
he’s just out of it. He sits down and goes into a totally wild version of
‘Goodnight, Irene.’ He’s going off, and it’s like a totally different person
recording.”

At the end of the session, Scanlan says, “Apparently Booker,
out of paranoia, insisted on taking the master tracks with him and proceeded to
leave them in the cab on the way home.”

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Ripple in Stillwater

Ripple in Stillwater is the sole creation of Stillwater, Minnesota, writer Karl Bremer. It covers whatever captures the author's muse at the moment. You can reach Ripple in Stillwater at saintcroix-at-aol-dot-com, or you can follow me on Twitter @kdbremer. If you're wondering about the name of this blog, go here.

Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists 2011 Page One Award Winner

Ripple in Stillwater author Karl Bremer won Second Place in the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists 2011 Page One Awards for "Best Use of Public Records."

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